Fernando Alonso is adamant "nothing has changed" at Ferrari in the wake of his Malaysian Grand Prix victory that has left him leading the Formula One world championship.

Remarkably, in a car seemingly lagging behind McLaren, Red Bull, Lotus and Mercedes in terms of pace, Alonso has managed to bag 35 points from the opening two races.

It is a dream start for Alonso and Ferrari given how uncompetitive their car has been in qualifying in Australia and at the Sepang International Circuit.

The changeable conditions certainly played their part yesterday as light rain at the start turned torrential soon after forcing the race to be suspended after lap nine for 51 minutes.

In the first pit stops, as drivers switched from extreme wets to inters, Alonso assumed the lead from which he never looked back, although he came under severe pressure at times from Sauber's Sergio Perez.

Initially hailing the victory as "a big surprise", Alonso knows his Ferrari is far from a class act and languishes behind many of their rivals.

"We were not competitive in Australia, we were not competitive here," said Alonso.

"But the victory does not change a jot our situation because we know that at the moment we do not have a car competitive enough to fight for the win under normal conditions.

"We have a lot of work to do to catch up, but the win does give us even more motivation because it shows this championship is not at all clear cut and anything can happen."

Perez arguably should have grabbed the win, but crucially ran wide at turn 14 on lap 50 after closing the gap to Alonso to 0.5secs.

Given Perez was also told by his engineer over the team radio "we need the position", it sparked suggestions of a conspiracy theory after the race given Sauber are powered by Ferrari engines and Perez remains a product of the Maranello marque's young driver academy.

Asked about the message, team principal Peter Sauber said: "He meant we needed the result. It's a misunderstanding.

"It was because that behind us, all the midfield teams, our main competitors, scored points.

"So it was important we kept the result and not the position."

Pressed on whether Perez had been told to stay behind Alonso, Sauber said: "No. We told him 'be careful we need the result'."

Sauber was then quizzed on whether there had been any discussion with Ferrari, but he said: "No. 100% no. 100% nothing.

"We had no discussion about Checo (Perez) nor the position."

Lewis Hamilton was third from pole for the second consecutive race and now trails Alonso by five points in the standings.

Team-mate Jenson Button could only finish 14th after a collision with HRT's Narain Karthikeyan necessitated a change of front wing from which he never recovered.

Karthikeyan also caused a left-rear puncture on Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull, dropping the reigning champion from fourth to out of the top 10 late on.

Scotland's Paul di Resta finished a fine seventh in a Force India that is currently lacking performance.